


Dining On Damnation

by GoddessRumina (Offwithherhead88)



Category: Reylo - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Post TFA, Reylo - Freeform, Reylotrash - Freeform, Romance, Smut, Star Wars - Freeform, Stillbirth, borderline au, sin eater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:00:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6678931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Offwithherhead88/pseuds/GoddessRumina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years have come and gone since Luke Skywalker reluctantly trained Rey; with only five passing since his death. With the Galaxy at momentary peace and a renewed Jedi Order established, Rey has taken to studying the ancient holocrons her late master bequeathed her.<br/>In her chosen solitary existence, a self-inflicting penance for past mistakes, Rey has adapted herself into the role of Sin Eater.<br/>With her sanctified bread and her holy wine, she consumes the sins of the galaxy’s most loathsome; freeing them of the stains encompassing their souls.<br/>When comes the call, beckoning her services, she answers. Always.<br/>Even for the man whom planted the tainted seed, leading to her soul’s mortification.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dining On Damnation

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be short. Like a few chapters short.
> 
> It's borderline AU.
> 
> Lots of liberties taken.
> 
> May not be strictly SW Canon
> 
> Deal with it.
> 
> ***  
> And towards the end of this post, the edit options were acting up so I couldn't italicize the spoken thoughts. Hopefully, it doesn't disrupt too much. Sorry!

She couldn't keep from staring at the countless intravenous lines that disappeared into alabaster flesh. Couldn't shut out the pungent scent of sterile medical equipment and isopropyl alcohol mixed with sick: sleeping quarters turned makeshift hospital.

This wasn't the first time Rey had seen a person in such a way, albeit they were normally deceased. The last soul she had attended wore wrinkles like road maps across their aged face, the tell-tales of a life full of adventures and smile lines. Or were they worry lines?

This seemed wrong; felt queer in the marrow of her bones. She felt knotted up inside as her hazel eyes skimmed over his sleeping form, pain etched into his handsome features. Despite the familiar gruesome scar, spanning across the bridge of a sharply defined nose and the cybernetic limb in place of a right arm, he was still magnificent to behold. Hair sleek and black as a raven's feathers, perfectly framed the dying man's face. It was longer than she remembered. Her fingers tingled with wanting to know if it still felt just as soft as-

The door opened.

Hux.

He's softer around the edges, Rey thinks. His hair is slicked back, a few strands straying across his weary eyes. He manages a weak smile at her and then proceeds to check his patient's levels.

"I trust Leia has told you?" He doesn't look at her. She remembers a time when he wanted nothing more than to kill her; she nods.

"What she could."

"Unbiased thing, cancer..." He says, absentminded as he plucks up the sleeping man's left wrist, his elongated fingers gingerly taking his vitals. "Not too difficult to treat, provided the patient has the strength to withstand the extensive new therapies; which he did. Ren was really quite stoic about it." She watches as he presses a few buttons on the saline distributer's control panel. 'But that was before we knew he had Colu's Syndrome... And well...as you see; it returned." Hux brushes back the man's hair from his sleeping face.

 _Nursemaid_. She smiles to herself at the irony of it.

The man finished his ministrations and hovered by the bedside rather lugubriously. Shoving a hand through his paling ginger hair he looked to her, blue eyes glassy with restrained emotion. _He was_ _always so easy to read._

  
"He's been asking Leia to send for you for days. That is, when he's not sleeping from the fever. It's taken longer than expected...for him to get like this. Too stubborn to die, and too fucking stubborn to live." He fidgets with the wool-knit blanket at the patient's feet, his eyes dodge back to his hands. "She's taking it really hard. Of course it's to be expected...with how fragile a state he's been in, well, it's just difficult."

Rey touches the former general's arm and gives it a gentle squeeze. "Thank you." Her warm eyes lock with his, her inner-force sending waves of calm and reassurance into the broken man.  
Beneath her gloved hand, she feels the years of self-inflicted punishment and guilt ridden turmoil rising like vapors from his skeleton. She feels the maternal urge to give him the hug he blatantly needs, but she thinks better on it and resists. As if hearing her conclusion, he breathes a sigh of relief.

  
Hux clears his throat and pulls his arm away after sensing her silent push. He looks to the patient as if to a friend- or was it more? _Unrequited love?_ mouth pursing as he makes some inner peace within himself.

"I've turned off the sedative...It helps with the pain management. So it will be-."

"I understand." She doesn't look at him. Her eyes are on the ebony lashes of the sleeping; catching the briefest twitch in movement. She moves closer to the bed, her leather clad hand sliding along the mass of blankets, stops just before she reaches his outer right thigh.

Rey doesn't look up when Hux leaves.  
______

Pulling her fingers free of their trappings, she flexes her bared hands, enjoying the sensation of cool ventilated-air drying the sweat thats formed between her digits. Slowly and ever so gently, she slides her hand over his, noting the coolness of his fingers and the fever of his palm.  
He stirs at her touch.  
Eyelids fluttering against the wills of dream.

Rey feels his fingers tighten around her's as his mouth pulls into a smirk.

"You took your time." His voice strained, thick and raspy from sleep. He opened one molasses brown eye, testing the light before raising the other's lid.

She smiled back," How d'you know?"

His frame shook with weak laughter. "That is was you?" He closed his eyes briefly before opening them back to her. "I _always_ know."

"Hmmmph." She gives his hand a gentle squeeze before pulling hers away.  
He notices, but doesn't protest.

"Your hands are also a dead giveaway." His robotic arm whirls and hums as he pushes himself up to look at her head on.

Letting out a sigh she looks to them. "I should think so...when they're as badly scarred as mine."

Rey eyes the chair at his bedside and makes a decision to move into it just as his mechanical arm wraps around her wrist, staying her.  
"I _wasn't_ talking about your scars. Sit here." He pulls her down onto the mattress, scooting to his left as to make more room for her. When he releases her, Rey reluctantly shifts into a more suitable position, folding her severely marred hands in her lap.

Her hazel gaze remains fixed, while trying her best to ignore the sensation of his taking liberties.  
"Why have you asked me here, Ren?" She finally says.

He silently demands her attention. Even in his weakened state, Kylo Ren commands her compliance. But he cannot bend her anymore. Not with a broken bond.

_Pretentious ass._

Brave, she looks up into his face when he doesn't answer, because, Dammit if she came all this way for him to just sit here and stare.

His expression is uncharacteristically soft and raw. Gentle in its honesty, but brutal in its occurrence. Rey's insides heave in familiar discomfort, his gaze having the power to once more ignite a fire long ago squelched.

He still doesn't speak.

_He knows I hate that._

"You know I can't hear your thoughts anymore. So if there's something you'd like to say, I suggest you say it." She chides.

"It's not that you _can't_. You _won't_. You haven't even tried." He snaps. Irritated, his hand pushes back the glossy black strands that annoyingly fall in his face.

 _Must his hair be so luminous even on his deathbed?_ She thinks on her simple tones of amber and chestnut, plaited down her back.

"You're still displeased with me." He deadpans.

Rey grumbles and averts her eyes from his. "I'm _always_ displeased with you."

Picking at a translucent tube in his forearm, he bites back the urge to further antagonize her. "Ah yes. Can't very well disappoint you."

"Enough Ren..."

"So we're back to that, are we? Have you convinced yourself that it's easier this way?" His tone teeters on cruel as he locks eyes with her.

Once more, her wrist is held captive by the mechno-arm, it's effortless strength pulling her over his legs and into his lap. Rey feels the urge to push him away, to refuse the uninvited contact; but she makes no such effort.

_If this is what you need to find your peace...._

"Stop that." He growls, both hands go to her face, steering it, gently-forcing her to truly look at him.

She sees _it._  
There.  
His pain.  
It's a small and fleeting flicker, but it's a long enough breath for her to steal. And for that snippet of a moment, she swears she can feel it too.  
His fingers are cool and clammy against her temples.  
Nothing has felt so wonderful in so long.

"Ren..."

"Don't do that. Not with me. Not this time." She notices the stubble on his chin, and when she peers closely, she catches the hints of silver streaks in his hairline. Rey doesn't hear what he says next, she doesn't notice the way he's looking at her, or the way the blood pressure monitors to her right bleep in warning.

She only sees the darkness. She smells the scent of frost laced pine; tastes the warm iron and urgency as his lips connect with hers in a brutal collision of lost years and broken wills. She doesn't want to, but her body moves of its own volition.

 _Traitor_ , she curses herself.

His teeth scrape at her bottom lip, sucking its fullness before trailing tokens of worship down to her collarbone. She feels the violent racing of his pulse in his jugular as her scarred hands skim up his neck and into his hair.

"Why?" He moans into her ear. Rey could feel the energy of him enveloping her; his body weak with disease, but soul still blazing with power.

"You _know_ why." She tries to push herself off. She needs to break away; stop this before it takes another five years to stop her body from aching for his.

His arms tighten around her, but the kissing ceases. Ren's heart stutters against its cage, and for a moment he feels like this is it-and _gods be damned if it didn't feel good._

Eyes closed, forehead against the warmth of her's; he can smell the ocean. The taste of salt still lingering on his lips from kissing her skin. He sees the island, hears the gulls crying their nomad's song. For a moment, he's no longer bedridden. He's barefoot, sinking into the pebbly sand of the beach, crisp sea winds washing over him. _Baptismal_.

 _Ben Solo could spend an eternity here_ , he thinks.

This is what _he_ wants. This is his _need_.  
His mind shifts to why; wincing from their shared sorrow.

"I think of him. What he'd be like...he's why I've asked you here." He finally whispers.

Rey's brow furrows against the memory of feather-soft newborn curls. She fights with the invading image of round cheeks that would never be sun-kissed. She pushes away, and Ren doesn't fight her departure.

"Don't." Back turned to him, Rey screws up her face and looks to the window - not out the window- but at the glass, and it's jaded reflection of her. The sun is starting to rise and she tells herself it's the rays causing the tears.

"I need you to forgive me." His voice is full of gravel. She doesn't look at him. She still stares at the window.  
"Rey..."

_Don't. Please don't._

"Rey!" He begs and she lets out a sound that resembles choking and laughter.

"Forgive you..." It wasn't a question. Her heart's rhythm echoes loudly in her ears- and for a moment her vision tunnels. "What's there to forgive? It wasn't you that killed him."

His arms slip around her waist, drawing her into his large frame, his hands rest atop her abdomen. She's vaguely aware that he's trembling. Emotion? Or pain? Was there a difference?  
"You still blame me."

He was only partially wrong. She blamed herself for not being stronger, for not knowing then how to. Had she made a different choice then, who's ashes would she wear inside the amulet around her neck? Sometimes she tells herself that mourning Ben Solo would be easier; easier than mourning a raven haired boy she never had a chance to truly know.

  
_Wrong_.

  
_I did._

  
She knew the beautifully subtle movements of exploration; knew the gentle whispers of his thoughts tickling within her own head. He was her beloved stranger. A star-crossed love made flesh.

Her breath catches.

_It's not easier._

_And I'm not ready._

  
Her hand slides over his and squeezes. "You shouldn't be out of bed."

"I've been in that _fucking_ bed far too long. It's suffocating me." He grumbles, another tremor taking hold.

She laughs at this-ignoring his evident pain and grips his arm to lead him back into bed. His chest erupts with a growl, his arm snatching back in refusal. The monitors begin to screech in alarm, and Rey glares up at him.

His eyes are hard, dark as obsidian , and she knows he has no intention of listening to reason. He begins pulling the cannulae, catheters and intravenous lines out, hissing as they pop one by one from his arm and below the left clavicle. His eyes squeeze shut when he pulls free the central venous line in his chest. She too, sympathetically hisses.

"What are you doing, Ren?" She rolls her eyes as he switches off the bleeping infusion pump and vitals monitor. He doesn't say anything but a few swear words as he begins looking through his dresser.  
"Mother of Kwath, Ren! What in hell do you think you are doing?" Her arms fold across her chest just as he finds what he's searching for.

Kylo Ren pulls the black jersey knit tee over his head, growling at the way it catches on several implantable ports along his breastbone. Rey fumes.

"Ren-" she starts, his clammy hand grabs hers and yanks her towards the door.

"We're leaving."

Rey pulls back, her knees locking in place. "No _we're_ not. You're not well enough to-" His mouth covers hers, cutting off any notion she had of arguing. His tongue traces with familiarity the inside of her mouth, making her body go rigid with surprise and then slacken with guilty pleasure.

She sees it then. His last rite. The island.  
_Her_ island.

His eyes are blazing when their kiss breaks, and Rey can't help but touch his face in sympathy.

"You'll die." She says weakly.

He smiles, a fire lighting behind his eyes. "I know."

__________

  
She doesn't know why she's agreed. Maybe it was out of sympathy for the man he was before Kylo Ren. Perhaps it was whispers of a broken bond. Devotion even, to the father of her dead child. She tells herself that it's not because she still loves him.  
No.  
She wouldn't allow that.

Rey watches him close his eyes and inhale, a look of peace coming over his features. His hair blows wildly in the breeze coming off the tide. He looks beautiful like this and for the briefest of moments, she forgets how ill he is.

"Your mother is going to have my neck for this." She bristles.

"You're wrong..." Ren chuckles. "My mother will thank you." He turns towards her, still smiling.

Rey scrunches her face against the late afternoon sun, ignoring the spreading warmth in her gut as he draws closer to her. "Does it hurt?"

"It doesn't matter." His skin is hot against hers when his hand wraps around her forearm, pulling- closing the distance between them.

Reluctantly, she looks at him when his hand moves to the neckline of her linen shirt- to the bronze amulet that cradles between her breasts. She watches his expression change when he realizes it's purpose, and her heart slams into her rib cage when he raises it to his lips to press a kiss. Tucking it delicately back into its refuge, his molasses eyes connect with hers.

"You should've never come back for me..." He whispers. The breeze catches his hair and plays with the strands across his face.

Rey reaches up between them and tucks the strays behind a wonderfully-awkward ear that's almost too large. "You would have done the same for me."

He turns and walks a few feet away, crouching low to the ground, his mechno-fingers pull angrily at the grass. "It's _not_ the same." His teeth grind. "You were pregnant. I wasn't worth the cost."

She remembers.

Looking down at her hands, she remembers; how she got the scars. Her throat goes dry and her eyes water with the memory of childbirth.

He had not been there. She wouldn't have that of him. It was to be her suffering.

Kylo Ren lay comatose, recovering from his near fatal battle with darkness, while Rey paid the high price of his ransom. Sixteen excruciating hours of hard labor and forty minutes of strenuous pushing, alone. Looking back, far less painful were they compared to the two hours it took for her son's body to reduce to ash.

She could still feel the heat pouring off his funeral pyre, and the scent of smoking elder wood and birch still filled her nostrils. Her living cell smelled of pennyroyal oil for months.

"I couldn't just let you die." She turns towards the path to her home, not bothering to see if he follows.

"No. You just wouldn't." He shouts back.  
_____

It's rained since she left and the stone path is dangerously slick. She stumbles carelessly downhill towards home, trying to ease the building emotions and wrestle with why she's agreed to this. A few times she catches herself from falling down the ruined steps, the strong gusts coming off the angry sea trying their best to topple her over.

The weather shifts with her disposition, but she ignores it. Her beehive cell in sight, she turns to check if he's following. Seeing that he's not, she resumes her descent, growing further irritated. A stone step gives way from beneath and her elbow sharply meets the rocky slope.

"Fuck!" She hisses, gripping her arm. The dark clouds open up and fat droplets of rain begin to fall, trailing the bloody muck and small bits of gravel from the wound down her arm to her fingertips.  
Sensing heavy eyes on her, she stalks towards the cell, snatching up a bucket of rainwater before disappearing inside.

______  
"Miss me?" She affectionately pats the faded silver and blue top of the astromech before hauling the bucket of rain water to the beloved plants that filled her makeshift bay-window. The droid whooped and tutted in greeting, following Rey to her chore.  
"We have a guest."

R2 hooted in surprise as he assisted in watering Rey's collection of starflowers. The little droid bleeped and chattered, his domed head swiveling happily.

"Ben... Solo." She stumbles over the name, it's sound and feel on her tongue evoking an electrical charge in her chest. She looks at the silent droid, it's photoreceptor stares at her almost solemnly. He hums and Rey manages a small smile. "It will be alright."

He purrs softly by her hip as she walks the bucket back outside the door. She can see Ren slowly descending the slope, completely oblivious of the heavy rain that's plastering his clothes to his body in such a way that causes her stomach to flip.

Deciding it best not to linger, she makes her way back to the small kitchen, ignoring the throbbing in her elbow and consistent dripping of blood splattering the stone floor.

___

She pulls apart her braid, letting the damp chestnut waves fall down her back; she briefly takes to massaging the ache in her scalp. Satisfied, she turns towards the conservator and removes yesterday's caught crab, transferring the specimens to the stone sink.

Cool fingers wrap around her left wrist and gently raise the arm. She's uncomfortably aware of the closeness of his body, feeling the warmth of his breath tickling the top of her head.

"You're bleeding everywhere." He twists her elbow into view. She can see the ugly gash along the boney joint, knowing that it likely warranted a small bacta strip. She shrugs.

Sighing in irritation he forces her forward, bending her body over the sink. Grabbing the crab and moving them to the counter and picking the hose from her right hand he takes to washing off the wound.

"I can do that." She huffs.

Pressing his hips into her, the wetness of his clothes soaking into her backside, he breathes in her hair, "Evidently."

_Mother of Moons..._

Turning off the water, he steers her to a chair and forces her into it. "Stay." He begins rummaging through cabinets and drawers. "Where do you keep the bacta patches?"

"Over there, under the cot. They're in a case...marked bacta." She snarks. He gives her an impressed look before kneeling to retrieve what he sought. "I'm surprised that you keep this at least organized. You've always been quite the unorganized pack rat." Ren motions towards the clutter, "I see little has changed."

Coming back and towering over her, he doesn't bother asking for her compliance. Kylo Ren holds her arm up and tears open the packet with his teeth. Rey lets out a small grunt of discomfort as he presses it firmly to her elbow- planting a quick kiss on it before releasing her.  
"That wasn't so hard was it?"

"Don't be an ass." She bites.

"You enjoy it." He smirks, pulling a stool much too small for his large frame to the table.

Rey notices the tension in his muscles, and the sickly glow to his skin. His hair is a sodden mess of black, sticking to his face like a veil. Ren notices her appraisal and shoves a hand through the wet locks. He looks at her, eyes expressive with intent, and before he speaks she stands.

"You're getting everything wet."

"Would you have me strip then?" His mouth twitches.

Rey scoffs at this, remarking how typical his reply is, as she searches the nearby linen closet for a clean towel. She finds a little more pleasure than she probably should in throwing the balled up fabric at his face. He takes her irritation with him in stride, making a point to showcase the towel's ineffectiveness at soaking up the water.

Rey kneels before an age-tattered chest at the foot of her cot, lifting the heavy lid- her arms disappear to the shoulder as they sort through its  innards. Ren watches her with curiosity as she shuffles through what looks to be clothing and fish nets.

"They may be a little small for you, but it's better than nothing." She tosses him a pair of faded black denim slacks and a cream colored shirt. Rey smiles knowingly as Ren proceeded to pluck at the garments as if they were diseased.

"You really shouldn't have..." He grimaces, holding up the clothing he knew too well. "You kept these...after all this time? You are quite the pack rat aren't you?"

Rey resists the urge to smack him upside the head and instead returns to tasking herself with meal preparations. "I found them stowed away on the Falcon.When you've lived as I have, there's no such thing as waste. Besides... If the notion of wearing your father's clothes bothers you so much, there's always Luke's."  
She smiles when she hears him grumble.

The sun is setting outside the small circular kitchen window and Rey catches the reflection of movement from behind. Hands busy with washing the crab, her eyes drift to the reflective glass. He's peeling off the wet tee, tossing it across the stool- movements controlled and cat-like. Her eyes rake over the taught muscle, caressing every known scar and every one she's never seen before. She remembers what it was like to touch him for the first time; the way he felt beneath her sand smoothed hands. He was different then. Passionately attentive and selfishly cruel in his desires of her; filling her head with carnal demands that left her aching for him in between their secret joining, and long after severing their bond.  
   His hands force down the pants that cling to his legs like bark- her eyes skim up the long ivory branches until they rest upon their juncture. The color in her cheeks flare.

Oh Ben...

His hand stills above his father's clothes, fingers tremble, then move to his temple as if in pain. He raises his head and looks to her, catching her eyes in the window. Rey casts her gaze back to the sink- to the same crab she's washed for over ten minutes; its limp body looking worse for wears.

His hands grasp her by the shoulders and spins  her. He's still naked. Eyes wide with bewilderment- she's seen them like this before- Ren's hands move to cradle her face between them.  
Rey grabs his wrists to push away but he stands firm.

"What did you say?." He chokes. His rich brown eyes are bright with exhilaration.

"What are you-" she starts, shaking her head free of his hands. She looks between them and flushes. "I didn't say anything."

His hand goes to her hair, tangling in its mass and redirecting her gaze back to his. "You did."

Rey feels her wits coming undone as his fingers trail behind her neck, pulling her closer until she's forehead to chin with him. At this closeness she can hear the strained beating  of his heart; its sound filling the void that's been deafeningly silent for so long. His skin is hot through her thin shirt and it makes her nipples ache with betraying need. She shuts her eyes as he tilts back her head, exposing the curve of her throat.

"Look at me, Rey."

Her hazel eyes snap open just as his mouth covers hers. A shiver runs down her spine and his mechanical arm pulls her against him. She feels her body sigh with the contact, while her mind screams for flight. Hands ball into fists at her side; every ounce of self-preservation keeping her from touching the smooth planes of his back.

Ren slides his hands down the swell of her ass and grasps her thighs, lifting her onto the edge of the sink. He can feel her reluctance as he licks the inside of her upper lip. When she parts her legs, wrapping them around his hips, moving against his arousal, it's still there.

"It's just us now." He breathes into the tunnels of Rey's mind before he stops kissing her.

Her eyes are squeezed shut, temple slightly pulsating from the rush of passion-laced adrenaline and the echo of his voice inside her head. Heart pounding behind its cage of bones, she feels the energy crack and spurt in a spray of life. Rey knows he's waiting for her reply; knows that he knows her body is crying out for his.  
His fevered skin almost burns the palms of her hands when she skims them along the scarred flesh of his abdomen. Fire. She thinks that soon she will have to build a pyre for him too.

I'm not ready.

"Don't be afraid." He presses his mouth against her forehead and gently twists his hand in her hair, using the other to trace the delicate bones of her jaw.  
"I'm here."

She meets Ren's mouth, closing the space between them. Answering his standing question with a kiss.

"I forgive you, Ben."


End file.
